


In An Unspecified Future

by Arya_Greenleaf



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Barbarella AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 10:49:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6048673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arya_Greenleaf/pseuds/Arya_Greenleaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Steve Rogers has lived a life of seclusion since he was found floating in uncharted space decades after the last Great Battle. Now, Earth and its neighboring star systems live in total, cooperative peace; however, there are still systems beyond the red zone that have clung to the old ways. With new information about a prisoner thought to be long dead, Captain Rogers is called into service once again and must give up his peaceful singularity in order to save a life and free a friend. Along the way he'll face excitement and danger in the most fascinating ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In An Unspecified Future

**Author's Note:**

> 18 FEB 2016: As of this initial posting, I haven't quite nailed down the finer details, which explains the current lack of tags. I'll absolutely add them as they become relevant, especially when I decide for sure what shipping is going to happen -- because you certainly can't have a Barbarella AU without at least a little ship action. It's very likely that this will become a Stoki story and that it will be explicit. I was just too excited to keep it to myself any longer.
> 
> In other news, this fic is inspired by the 1968 film, _Barbarella_ , which I had always been vaguely aware of but lacked an interest in until I saw [neurovicky's art](http://neurovicky.tumblr.com/), (seriously go check it out, you will love it), of [Steve](http://neurovicky.tumblr.com/post/126686327509/hello-pretty-pretty-astronavigator-rogers) and [Loki](http://neurovicky.tumblr.com/post/124784768649/this-is-my-birthday-gift-to-myself-loki) in our dauntless astronavigator's costumes.

It had been a long day out amongst the stars.

Steve was on a mission for SHIELD, collecting jars of stardust from the farthest reaches of the universe—or at the very least, the farthest reaches of the lawful universe. He had to be mindful of how far he traveled, even the tip of a boot outside of carefully demarcated boundaries could mean imprisonment in a zone that still kept up the primitive practices of war.

Capture may mean that he was beyond the SHIELD’s influences, that he may never come home.

Still, Steve had volunteered for this post.

It was quiet and serene out amongst the stars, even with his careful toeing of the line. He had room to breathe, room to think, room to be alone.

Earth and many of the other planets in his system had long since abandoned inefficient practices like war and completely eradicated all weapons in favor of cooperative, peaceful ways of life. There was less death, less expense.

It was everything Steve had fought for in the final years of the Great Battle.

But he couldn’t abide it, couldn’t find his place in it all. He’d lost too much.

Steve moved through the airlock and set his latest samples down in the quarantine module for processing and started to remove his walk-suit as he floated in the in the warmed, weightless air of the decontamination chamber. He laughed to himself, the floating and spinning like a feather on the wind one of the few things he derived genuine pleasure from, as he yanked his boots off and unzipped his gloves from the ends of his sleeves. The ultraviolet germicidal irradiation activated as the heat signature from his bare skin became visible. He continued to unzip zippers and yank open Velcro, pulling the legs and arms off of the suit and then finally deactivating the anti-reflective surface of his helmet and closed the window of the airlock. Finally free of the last piece of his suit, the UV light pulsed bright over his torso and several long seconds later he was stepping through the inner door to his habitation unit as free as the day he was born.

“JARVIS, are we still on stable course?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“How close are we to the red zone?”

“Twelve miles, Earth-scale.”

“Thanks, JARVIS.” The ship’s AI activated the artificial gravity and Steve put his bare feet down on solid ground.

“Shall we be moving any closer this cycle, sir?”

“Next Earth cycle, I think.”

“That begins in eleven hours, Earth-scale.”

“Good, good. We’ll go right up against the red zone, toe the line.”

“Of course, sir.”

Steve stretched and stepped down into the sleep tank, asking the AI that regulated the ship’s systems and ran the autopilot protocols wake him in eleven hours. He managed to squeeze in a solid two before his urgent communications alarms began to go off, effectively waking him.

Steve scrambled up out of his sleep tank. He rarely received communications at all, let alone urgent ones, so this stuck him as particularly alarming. He wondered briefly as the tele-screen flickered to life, popping with static as the systems searched for a stable wavelength to receive the signal on, what could possibly be the problem?

He snapped to attention as Director Fury’s image came into focus. “Sir.”

“Captain. I apologize, did I wake you?”

“Yes, sir, it’s alright. If you’d let me just put on—“

“There’s no time for that. I’m certainly not shy if you aren’t. You need to get moving as soon as possible.” Steve nodded, waiting for his instructions and wondering if he’d somewhere along the line violated some kind of peace accord with his stardust sampling. Had he touched some cluster someone held sacred? He’d find the sample and deliver it into the proper hands as soon as he could. “We’ve intercepted communication that indicates someone we thought was long gone is being held captive in the Hydra system.”

“The Hydra system, sir?” It was a planetary grouping well behind the line of the red zone. The groups that lived in the system still clung to the principles of war and conflict and punishment over cooperative peace. They believed in the concept of order through pain.

“Yes. And I believe that this prisoner will be of particular interest to you.”

Steve was immediately confused. There had been no capture or exchange of prisoners since the Great Battle had ended, since he had last been on Earth. Had one of the leaders of the Hydra system arranged some kind of kidnap? Were they trying to bring war back to the peaceful systems?

“We have reason to believe that Sergeant Barnes has been held prisoner there for some time now.”

Steve’s head felt light, his heart fluttered. He thought he was going to be sick. “No, no, Sir. Buc—Sergeant Barnes is _dead_. I watched him get sucked out of the airlock—there’s—there’s no way he could have survived.”

“I’ve already uploaded the coordinates to your ship’s navigation, all you need to do is initiate autopilot.”

“Director Fury, I—“

“Captain, I wouldn’t send you on a fool’s errand. This is solid information.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re going to need to protect yourself while you’re in the Hydra system. I’m going to send you several items, have you got your cargo transport receiver on?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a flash of light and on Steve’s end appeared a sidearm, a rifle, and ammunition cartridges for each. Steve picked them up and examined them, frowning at the shining blue fluid, or what looked like fluid, in the cartridges. Had he not fought to keep people from using these exact tools of destruction?

“I think I have one more thing for you. It might be the most important.”

Steve watched as a round object shimmered into solidity in the hub. It was just as brilliantly colored as it ever was, the star in the center both a ridiculous target and a loud message. Steve clenched his jaw and picked it up, slipping the soft leather straps over his arm and feeling a bit like he was whole again and hadn’t realized before that he was missing a limb.

“This is a pure rescue operation. Do what you need to, but get in and out as quietly as possible. If you run into trouble, unfortunately, you’ll be on your own. We can’t claim responsibility for you.”

“I understand.”

“Get back safely.”

“Yes, sir.” Steve stood frozen for a long moment, staring at the blank tele-screen until JARVIS jarred him back to reality. “What? Yes, yes, set the course. I’m going to hibernate until we get there. I’ll need all the energy I can get.”

“Yes, sir. I shall alert you when necessary.”

Steve yanked the shield off of his arm, set it aside, and slipped back down into his sleep tank. He settled down as comfortably as he could and sank down into the dark and nothingness of induced hibernation.

It seemed like no time at all before JARVIS was waking him, the danger alarms from the cockpit screaming and flashing. “We’re experiencing intense magnetic disturbances, sir. I cannot control the navigational systems independently.”

Steve dove down into the pilot’s seat and took over manual control. The magnetic fields in front of him burst in brilliant, swirling colors, driving him backward in his memories—

_Just give me your coordinates, Steve, please, we can find you a spot to land safely._

_Peggy, I can’t—if this thing goes off anywhere near our star system the black hole it’ll make—Peg, Peg, listen. I think I’m gonna need a raincheck on that dance._

_Alright then. 20:00, seven Earth cycles. We’ll meet at the Stork Cantina. Don’t you dare be late._

_Of course not, wouldn’t dream of it. There’s just one problem._

_What’s that?_

_I still don’t know how to dance._

_Steve, I’ll teach you. Just be there._

_Peggy… Peggy?_

He’d driven the Valkyrie headlong into a magnetic field. The ship had blown apart, the artificial atmosphere inside expanding and collapsing in a matter of seconds as systems failed. Somehow, the cockpit had been mostly spared. Steve had floated in uncharted space in a state of induced heavy hibernation for dozens of Earth cycle revolutions. At some point, the Peaceful Systems had begun probative scientific explorations, looking for new sources of energy that no single government could lay exclusive claim over. During those explorations they’d stumbled across Steve in the sealed cockpit entirely by accident.

Steve shook himself out of his sad nostalgia. His ship was shaking violently, threatening to break apart in the magnetic field he was forcing it through. He slammed down on buttons, flicked switches, leaned on the wheel with everything he had.

Suddenly, he was through the field. His ship had stopped shuddering but JARVIS was no longer responding. The ship fell through the atmosphere of who-knew-what planet, its velocity increasing at an alarming rate. If he didn’t pull up and slow down his descent his mission would be over before it even started.

Steve struggled against the pull of what he suspected was gravity quite similar to Earth’s, trying to force the nose of his ship to point up. He managed to slow his falling down by fractions before he slammed into the surface of the planet. Steve held his head, dazed by the rough landing and crawled up and out of the cockpit. He stumbled through the habitation unit to the sparking fuse panel on the back wall. He hissed in pain, gingerly plucking at wires and switches until the lights stopped flickering and the emergency alarms quieted.

“JARVIS?”

“Captain? Yes—I apologize—I seem to have gone offline for a moment. I think I am functioning again.”

“How are we doing?”

“I believe we have landed on Kronas-616.”

“Are we in the right place then?” There was a long pause before JARVIS confirmed it. “How close are we to where-ever Fury thinks Sergeant Barnes is being held?”

“Unfortunately, we’re on the wrong side of the planet.”

“Of course.” Steve sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose and slammed the fuse panel closed. “Are your flight systems operational?”

“I’m afraid not, Captain. The gyroscope appears to have been seriously damaged. Even if we were to get off the ground, I would not be able to fly.”

“Dammit! What’s the atmosphere like?”

“The climate appears to be dry and temperate, Earth standards. The atmosphere is approximately two hundred nine thousand, four hundred sixty parts per million by volume, Earth measurement, and…”

Steve listened with half an ear as he checked the security of his stardust samples in the quarantine module. “Well, at least I’ll be able to breathe. JARVIS, please adjust the habitation unit’s artificial gravity to match that of the planet.”

“Yes, sir. Adjusting now.”

Steve could feel the heaviness of his limbs, Kronas-616’s gravity evidently slightly stronger than Earth’s, but not so much that he wouldn’t acclimate quickly. He picked up his shield from where he’d left it and began to slip it onto his arm, preparing to go through the airlock and see what was waiting for him outside.

“Oh. I suppose I should get dressed.”

He raised a brow, shrugged, and moved back through the habitation unit to find something suitable.

**Author's Note:**

> Kronas-616 is a reference to Aleksander Lukin and the Kronas Corporation as well as the comic universe they exist in.
> 
> JARVIS references the volume of oxygen in the atmosphere. It's the same as Earth's, approximately 21%. He just went the long way around of explaining it.


End file.
